We already know that we have to be on social media to nurture and cater to our audience. But are you posting on Instagram and not seeing results? Want a step-by-step guide to posting for better engagement? Today, we’ll walk you through a simple process for building an Instagram content strategy that boosts engagement and simplifies your workflow. You’ll discover how to evaluate your content and fill in the gaps to make sure you’re posting consistently and with content that your audience will love. We’ll also show you examples of what an Instagram content strategy looks like for both product and service-based businesses.
What Is Your Goal?
The first thing you wanna do for a content strategy is figure out what your goal is. Some of your goals can be brand awareness, conversions, followers, leads, website clicks. This is all going to give you some purpose of creating content.
Survey Your Resources: Your Team, Schedule, and Content Bank
The second part is resources. You’re gonna hear from many different sources to post every single day, or post multiple things a day. But the realistic question to ask is what are your resources? Do you have team members that can create content and post the content? What is your realistic life schedule? Can you show up five times a week? Four times? Identify that executing anything else.
Think of a blank calendar and try themes, basic themes that you could bring for your company and your business. You could do Motivational Mondays, Tip Tuesdays, and Wacky Wednesdays if you wanna be silly with your content. Theme your content so it’s not so overwhelming and you can focus on what you’re actually creating for that day.
Another thing to think about, is do you already have content? You do not have to create brand new content all the time. You may have a vault of content that you haven’t used or that you used maybe two, three months ago, a year ago, or five years ago. What content that you already have that you can put into your new Instagram content strategy?
Choose Your Post Types
The next step is figuring out what platform that you’re gonna be publishing on and what are the features that you use the most. In this post, we’re talking about Instagram. So ask yourself if you want to do Lives more? Or Reels, Stories, regular feed? When you’re planning out your Instagram content strategy this is going to be important, because you are gonna focus on that main feature and repurpose for the rest. So you don’t have to create Stories and Reels and Instagram Lives, all of those at one time. You just have to focus on one or two things and repurpose the rest.
Content Strategy for a Product-Based Business
We’re big on examples. We could write all day and tell you what to do but if you can’t relate to it, then it won’t be of any use. So let’s start with an actual product. Our example will be a juice, and this is our strategy from Monday through Friday.
On Monday, let’s go on an educational route. Let’s talk about the benefits of juicing. For feed posts, you could do a carousel or a checklist of what are some of the benefits. And you’ll then take that same idea and repurpose it for stories. You could also get in front of the camera and talk about the benefits of juicing!
On Tuesday, let’s focus more on the community. This is great for brand awareness. Let’s do a group picture of people drinking the actual juice and write a caption describing what is happening in the picture, maybe a call to action. And what you’re going to do on stories, is take that same exact picture and actually tag the product, so people know where to buy it from.
Wednesday, we’re gonna do more of a behind the scenes and the journey of your brand. You can take a picture or a video of somebody actually going into the store and buying the juice. So for stories, you could tag some of the stores that carry the juice so it can help your customers and followers know exactly where to get the product.
So on Thursday, you could go with a typical theme such as Throwback Thursdays. But for juice how can we do that? What was and what wasn’t? So, on the feed you could show you a whole bunch of juices and then a whole bunch of empty ones, showing that people are actually drinking these juices. Now on stories, encourage everybody who follows you to do a before and after. Whether it’s weight, or them drinking the juice, however they feel like doing a before and after. Bonus tip: Use the ‘Add yours’ sticker! What this is gonna do is allow your community to participate and engage with your stories by uploading their own pictures and videos.
Now, we’re on to Friday. This is where we’re going to use user generated content. Do testimonials. Get people to talk about your product and share it on your feed. You could even do a customer takeover. Allow somebody to do a day in the life of them using the juices and putting it on your stories!
Content Strategy for a Service-Based Business
Moving onto service-based, or actually location-based as well and we’re gonna use photography as our example.
So on Monday, the theme could be memories. So on feed, you could do a carousel of one memory that you love from a particular wedding. On stories, you can show the best pictures that youI have on my stories from that particular day.
Tuesday is gonna be educational. You wanna think about what is going to add value to your followers. So on feed, we’re gonna talk about what are the best key moments to capture for your weddings. On stories, you could poll people based on that same theme. If we’re capturing the kiss, show two pictures and say which one captured the kiss best, A or B? For reels, you could do a Do’s and Don’ts. Do hire you, don’t hire uncle Harry that has an iPad to shoot your whole wedding. Be funny!
On Wednesday, we’re gonna go on the inspirational route and do looks. So on your feed you’re gonna show different looks for different brides and grooms based on what you’ve shot. On stories, we’re gonna use the ‘Add Yours’ sticker and have them upload some of their favourite brides and grooms pictures!
So Thursday we’ll stick with a Throwback Thursday theme. On your feed, we’re gonna go from start to finish what it takes to shoot a wedding. You could do this in a carousel or you could do this in a video. For stories, it’s gonna be a little bit more organic. It’s could be you recording it on your phone, interviewing the bride and the groom or some of the guests there. Basically, a more organic feel of exactly what you did on your feed.
For Friday, we’re gonna go towards the testimonial route and use user generated content. Now, let’s talk about going Live. You could bring a past couple who had your services and do a quick interview with them. For your regular feed, show some of your best testimonials, whether it’s one or in a carousel. And then on your stories, do some highlights of your best testimonials with some of the pictures that came with that particular wedding!
Ways to Post Your Content
So now that we have all this content, there are two ways to post it. One, you could post it right on our phone or on our desktop. Two, you could schedule out your post. You could use Business Suite and Creator Studio. On the Business Suite, you can actually schedule up your stories as much as you want. And to learn more about scheduling and Creator Studio, make sure to stay tuned to our next Instagram for business series!
